I reckon one of the things you’re paying for as the price increases is consistency. I’ve found that I can usually find something better than merely bearable at around $40 when helping friends find a first uke, but it takes annoying the music shop owner for several hours playing all the stock on hand … Spend more and you have to play less examples before finding something likeable.
At $1000 I expect perfection all the way up the neck. And then I put it back because I can’t justify it.
Awwwww damn. I play electric bass, and I gotta admit this is slick.
Somehow I doubt that the $1000 is 50 times more annoying to those around you than the $20 one.
Sure that’s valid. The bottom line is finding a cheap uke that is good, I think when we talk about “cheap ukes” we might picture the worst toy/garbage ukes available, and that’s not what I’m talking about. I’ve had Kalas, Makalas, and Lanikais that all had intonation problems-- when they are attaching the bridge to the top there isn’t a lot of leeway where they can put it, it has to be in the right spot or the tuning will sour as you go up the neck. A friend of mine who built a cigar box uke did the safe thing and just used a floating bridge and a tailpiece, so she could adjust it once the strings were on. In theory you could unscrew and steam off a poorly placed bridge, but then we’re getting onto a “more labor than it’s worth” area.
I do too, but if the snobbery factor was removed it would be affordable to people who just like music of that era, rather than violins being hidden away as investments.
I know one of those North London families where the kids have multi-thousand-dollar violins because…the other rich kids do too…and two of those violins have been seriously damaged because children can’t be trusted with such instruments. But for the snobbery factor those instruments might be in the hands of genuine but poor musicians who currently can’t afford them.
THIS IS A JOKE
Give me their address, ill show up with some Heavies and… Liberate them.
NOT JOKE
Unplayed instruments are unloved instruments. I do have one guitar that me not anyone else has ever played, but it is a Paul Stanley washburne, so its on purpose.
Sounds like you live in London. I have personal experience of being able to go to lots of interesting concerts while living in that city despite having no money for extras at the time. Check the listings at all of the colleges and universities within easy public transportation of you. A significant number of concerts, shows, and lectures are either free or ask for donations on a sliding scale. And you can dress as scruffy as you want!
How is it that I’m out of 
's ?
They love it when you dress up as a conductor. Either kind.
I was born in London, but to paraphrase G K Chesterton, I have lived more than half my life in England.
It’s all a mixed bag. I bought my first ukulele back in 2000, from a kiosk in Honolulu’s Ala Moana Mall. It cost me $365–a good chunk of change for me back then. It was made by a five-year-old upstart of an ukulele manufacturer, named KoAloha. These days, they’re respected as one of the top builders in Hawaii. Mine is made of 100% koa wood (a sacred tree that is protected, banned from cutting down, and permitted for harvesting only if the tree fell. It is that rare) and no other wood. This soprano (“standard”) uke looks plain and unassuming, except for the color of the wood. Still, the tone is nothing less than magical: every note rings clear and projects with amazing volume. It sounds so good, it can and has made newbies sound great as they stumble around plinking notes. It even sounds waaaayyyyy better than some $1K ukes I’ve checked out.
The thing is, from my experience, a $20 uke will not touch your soul. Then again, there’s no guarantee that a $1K uke will either. However, somewhere in the middle, it is possible to find it.
BTW, I do own two other ukuleles that did cost me around $1K each. Both are tenors. The soprano that cost me about 1/3 still sounds the best. Go figure. Then again, good luck finding a new standard uke, built like mine, for less than $1K.
Heh, perhaps we should have a uke talk thread 
I love the look of koa, but I would be fine with no new koa ukes ever again (kinda like how I am fine with no grenadilla clarinets/oboes, Brazilian rosewood guitar back and sides, and boxwood recorders).
Cedar, spruce, and other long grained woods sound better and are more sustainable. And for wind instruments… Brace yourself… Plastic or carbon fiber.
Our sacred wood supplies are too low, and I’d prefer people even forgot we made instruments out of them.
I think the way Hawaii is handling their koa wood supply is quite admirable: You can’t cut them down, unless you owned the property they’re growing on since before they were planted. Otherwise, ABSOLUTELY no cutting down the trees. Harvest of weather-toppled or fallen dead tress are all that is permitted.
fist bump
As an instrument enthusiast, it still worries me that similar to ivory or rhino horn… Well, the temptation is still there. Which is why we are at the levels we are with boxwood and Brazilian rosewood.
They are badass trees.
Total tangent: someday I will have a garden with a koa, a boabab, a saguaro, and a pond with a Victoria lily. I may have to invent teleportation though 
(I like plants)
ETA
Boabab
Grenadilla (oh god this is priceless)
B. Rosewood.
(Victoria lily ::D)
I’m trying to imagine the number of micro-climates your yard would need to encompass to pull that off!
I may need to purchase central america along with some mexico.
My sister lives in Hawaii, and when her kids were in second grade or so they learned to play ukes in school, instead of the cheap plastic recorders we played at that age. Much nicer for everybody around, as well as a skill they might keep up for life, and a $20 uke played badly sounds infinitely better than an overblown plastic recorder. (I guess plastic recorders must have been marketed well - a $10 tin-whistle is a lot easier for me to control, at least as an adult.)
I’ve got a $20 toy uke and an unappraised vintage (1920s?) Martin uke that was handed down to us from Hawaiian in-laws. One sounds like a toy, while the other makes me sound amazing, like I know what I’m doing on those funny little 4-stringed instruments.
As others have commented, strings and tuners make a huge difference. But so does the quality of the wood, the precision of the fret placement, the length of the neck, the binding, etc. It’s the same reason a $100 Made-in-China acoustic usually doesn’t sound as good as a handcrafted Santa Cruz that retails for $5k.
